Laïos

Figures and characters

Appears in 3 videos · 3 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani mentions Laius only through the myth of Oedipus, and always briefly. He presents him as the king of Thebes killed by Oedipus at a crossroads, whose murderer the oracle demands be found1. Laius appears above all as the victim whose murderer Oedipus himself is looking for2 3, and as the father whom Oedipus killed without knowing who he was4. He also recalls that this unsolved murder is what brings the plague upon Thebes5. The character therefore serves to recall one element of the Oedipus plot; he is not studied for his own sake. The sessions in which he is cited deal with varied subjects: amnesia, the reality of the sciences of history, roots and migration, evil as self-"disknowledge", an illumination by Rimbaud, the repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society. From 2020 to 2025, the role he gives him stays the same: a slain father whose death, unknown to the one who caused it, remains to be solved.

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Season 13 · 9 Aug 2025The repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society

33:54Killed by Oedipus, who did not know he was his father.

Series · 13 Jun 2025OUR FORMER SAVAGERY? - An impromptu reading of an Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud

27:12Father of Oedipus, whose murderer must be found to stop the plague in Thebes.

Season 13 · 2 Dec 2024Evil, or the "unknowing" of the self

49:17Victim whose murderer Oedipus is seeking.